So, corvettes are still the power?

[Killial]

Is it just me or does it really so often make no sense to try to build ships other than corvettes untill wery late game?

I've been playing the game for a very long time, and I'm coming to the conclusion that corvettes remain the best option in the early and mid game, and even a little bit in the late game.

No matter how many times I've tried building early fleets of destroyers and higher rank ships, they just don't work. AI empires always have a fleet stronger than mine, and non-corvette fleets lose out on fleet power points always.

Corvettes are cheap, quickly to built, fast and quickly replenished when destroyed.

Corvette fleets of the same cap size always win by power points from equivalent fleet cap size of warships and other ships.

The only point I see in build higher tier ships is only in the wery late game when research neutron launchers or kinetic altirely.

Is this really true or am I missing some points that make other types of ships more usable?

P.S: However, I don't play online against real people to judge online games. Only occasionally with friends in coop against AI empires.

[VoiD]

Dunno, right now I have made fleets of all corvettes, destroyers, cruisers and Battleships, unlike in previous versions none seemed like "the best" and they have all worked quite well with certain configurations.

Even the good old artillery battleship designs still work very, very well, they don't just overpower everything else like they used to.

[VoiD]

Oh, also, do be careful with the fleet power thing.

Autocannons have insane DPS, while most weapons are around 4dps autocannons can reach something like 18.

But the trick is, they deal even more damage to shields, so they basically instantly delete all shields the moment they reach their target, but they deal 1/4 of that damage to armor, and armor is a LOT stronger than it used to be.

So, on the largest portion of the ship's EHP you'd be dealing about 4dps, and not 18, if your ships are mainly built out of armor it's not unusual to see a properly built fleet of destroyers and/or cruisers wiping the floor with corvette fleets 3x or even 4x their power without any losses at all, disruptor cruisers of 20k power can probably erase corvette fleets of 60k with 0 losses, likewise, artillery computer destroyers/cruisers can do something similar by spamming missiles, etc..

[Bumc]

The hull progression seems to make sense in latest versions, at least for me.

The best strategy against overwhelming amount of AI forces seems to be hit-and-run with low losses per battle. As long as they don't 5 to 1 you every fight (which you should play around with maneuvering), you always lose less and eventually can catch their fleets on repairs and actually destroy them, or at least win out on attrition and force white peace.

Destroyers with regular guns eat corvettes between good tracking on their weapons and lowest risk of disengagement against small hits.

Whirlwind cruisers eat destroyers, all AI cruisers and most AI battleships -- even PD doesn't keep up with spam of small missiles.

Battleships and titans start making sense only when your artillery becomes so powerful that you annihilate everything before it comes close.

Then it would wrap around to corvettes/frigates, but AI never utilizes hyperlane ambushes unless you walk into them yourself.

[MadArtillery]

All battleship is still good because of XL weapons and fighters, All frigate is actually pretty terrifying as well and have all the benefits of corvette spam with a bonus to anything big while ALSO having the option to turn evasive artillery swarm. Great combined with all heavy kinetic focuses fleets to have a few fleets of long range frigates/torpedo cruisers using the neutron launchers. Lategame a fleet of no retreat suicide bomber torpedo frigates can be quite the force as well easily killing double thier fleet power.

[corisai]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

All frigate is actually pretty terrifying as well

Lol? Cruiser could do the same but much better then frigate.

[Gingermonkey]

I made a corvette fleet that used nothing but the nano missiles weapons and they decimated fleets much bigger than them, with 20-30k fleet of just corvettes taking out the entire Great Khans forces. But that has more to do with the weapon itself than the ship i suppose. But it made for (relatively) cheap ship to build.

[Spetsnaz]

Corvets are fine and can pack a huge punch but to me they are not worth it. They get destroyed too fast and yeah you can replace them but would rather just have battleship or cruisers. Huge punch and they don't die as fast

[felmari]

someone should do a spreadsheet or something with evasion plus weapons to fleet size in relation to other ships. corvettes only real defensive strength is evasion and numbers with fairly versatile possible loadouts.

be pretty interesting to see some numbers and medians.

[corisai]

Originally posted by felmari:

be pretty interesting to see some numbers and medians.

90% evasion cruisers are possible if Chaos Gods are loving you (need Shroud buff).

[VoiD]

Originally posted by RMS_Gingermonkey:

I made a corvette fleet that used nothing but the nano missiles weapons and they decimated fleets much bigger than them, with 20-30k fleet of just corvettes taking out the entire Great Khans forces. But that has more to do with the weapon itself than the ship i suppose. But it made for (relatively) cheap ship to build.

Yeah, that's pretty much the best weapon in the game, disruptors are completely broken right now, and cruisers with M disruptors can trash any fleets, of any kinds, many times "stronger", they just struggle a bit against stations.

And those missiles are like upgraded, long range disruptors.

If you can afford to make fleets out of them, just spam them.